


Trick or Trial

by IJM



Category: General Hospital
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-22
Updated: 2019-10-22
Packaged: 2020-12-28 00:26:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21127766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IJM/pseuds/IJM
Summary: Franco's competency hearing is explosive.





	Trick or Trial

**Author's Note:**

> Not for Profit.  
For Entertainment Purposes Only.

Elizabeth Baldwin was appalled when her husband walked into the courtroom dressed in a regulation Navy Seal uniform. Anger flared inside of her. Kim Nero and Martin Gray had arranged this farce. That was not Drew Cain’s uniform. Her husband would never have been so disrespectful to Drew’s service as to wear that uniform as if it were his own. Kim and Martin Gray were making a fool of Franco. This was a nothing but a publicity stunt on the part of Martin Gray.

“He should be disbarred,” Elizabeth whispered to her father-in-law and her lawyer, Scotty Baldwin.

Scotty was also angered by the tactic because the man that they were dressing like G.I. Joe was his son who had recently experienced significant brain trauma.

“Why is he dressed like that?” Cameron Webber asked his mother as all parties took their seats. It was unsettling. He had never even seen Drew in a uniform and Franco had no military experience at all.

“That lawyer is a con artist,” Elizabeth whispered back to him, though she held her tongue from that point forward to pay attention to the hearing. Her mind played back some of the things she wanted to say when it was her time to take the stand while the purpose of the hearing was stated. She took stock of who was present—Scotty, Cameron, Kevin Collins, Lucas Jones, Jordan Ashford, Andre Maddox, Martin Gray, Kim Nero, Monica Quartermaine, and Jason Morgan. Her two younger children would not be called on unless Scotty determined that it was unavoidable. 

Martin Gray was the first lawyer to call someone to the stand. “I would like to call upon the man formerly known as Franco Baldwin to speak for himself.”

“He’s not Prince, you lunatic,” Elizabeth muttered under her breath. Did Martin Gray think he could sell off paintings by the Artist Formerly Known as Franco to get a big payoff?

“Please introduce yourself,” Martin Gray said.

Franco’s posture was rigid. His speech was precise. But his eyes were hollow. Maybe no one else could see it, but Elizabeth could. This Drew identity was not real.

“I am Chief Petty Officer Andrew Cain of the United States Navy.”

“How long have you identified yourself as Andrew Cain?”

“I have no recall of any other identity, Sir.”

“Are you aware that your lifetime’s worth of memories has been transferred into the body of another human being?”

“That is my understanding, Sir.”

“And whose body does your mind now inhabit?”

“Franco Baldwin.”

“What can you tell me about Franco Baldwin?”

“I understand he was subjected to an experimental procedure, taking the place of his stepson, but with full knowledge that his memories would be erased and mine would be given to him.”

“So, Franco Baldwin voluntarily became you?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Franco Baldwin’s wife and family want you to have an experimental procedure that may or may not restore his memories. Are you willing to do this procedure?”

“No, Sir. I am not. It is my understanding that the procedure could leave the brain in this body in a vegetative state. Then both Franco and I would be gone. I don’t see that as a risk worth taking. I am happy with who I am.”

“What do you think Franco would say?”

“Sir, Franco does not exist anymore. He would not say anything.”

“Are you bothered by the fact that Franco Baldwin’s family has lost him?”

“I regret that someone who would give up his life for a child was destroyed in the process. But, that’s life. Any soldier could tell you that the willingness to give up your life for your brother—or child in this case—is part of being an honorable man. Mr. Baldwin made that sacrifice. There is no coming back.”

“Thank you,” Martin Gray said. He turned around, trying to hide a smug smile. “Drew’s” answers had been carefully constructed to make him seem competent.

Cameron couldn’t help but openly cry at the last words spoken by the man in the witness chair. He confirmed that Franco was gone because of Cameron. Elizabeth rubbed her son’s back, enraged at everyone who was feeding Franco this nonsense that he really was Drew Cain now.

“I reserve the right to call this man back to the stand,” Scotty Baldwin told the judge. He did not want to badger his son unless he had to go that far. Everyone on that side of the courtroom was taking advantage of Franco’s brain injury. He could shred them all individually, but he would not take part in the abuse of a very confused man if he could prevent doing so.

Kim Nero was called to the stand. She stated her name and relationship to Drew and defined her relationship to Franco as a “friendly acquaintance.”

“Dr. Nero, why do you believe that this man has the right to identify himself as Drew Cain?”

“He _is_ Drew,” Kim said. “Maybe not physically, but he knows Drew’s life, everything about his life: his background, his relationships, his military service, our love. The man in question undoubtably has Drew Cain’s memories and mind now because he can recall details that only he and I would know. He deserves to live and to be himself. Maybe he’s in the wrong body, like a person who is transgender. But there’s no medical way to change his body to match his mind. There’s also no proven medical way to change his mind to match his body. He has to be allowed to live his life as who he believes he is.”

Martin Gray thanked her. Then Scotty approached her.

“When and where did you meet Drew Cain?”

“He was initially stationed in San Diego in 2002. I was working on a medical residency at the time.”

“And you had a long-term relationship?”

Kim paused. “Just a few months, but it was an intense few months.”

“This relationship produced a son, correct?”

Kim bristled. “Yes, Oscar. He died a few months ago due to brain cancer.”

“My condolences on your son’s death.”

“Thank you.”

“The real Drew Cain, the man who fathered your child, came into your life again in the last few years, is that correct?”

“Yes, it is.”

“And how would you classify your relationship in 2019 with the man who fathered your child?”

“Friendly.”

“Did you rekindle your sexual relationship?”

Kim looked down, “No. I don’t see how that’s relevant.”

“Trust me, it is.” Scotty told her.

“You were, in fact, seeing another man, Julian Jerome. Is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“Why did this relationship end?”

“Things just didn’t work out.”

“I think you need to be more specific.”

“Because I had an affair with Drew.”

“Drew Cain or the man who falsely believes he is Drew Cain, Franco Baldwin?”

“Franco.” Kim answered bitterly.

Scotty turned around to the courtroom. He saw that Elizabeth looked determined and angry. Cam was still upset. “The fact is, though, this was not the first time you cheated on Julian Jerome, or at least attempted to. Please tell us about that.”

Kim was dumbfounded for a moment. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Yes, you do. And you can answer the question, or I can call Julian Jerome to the stand.”

“After Oscar died… I wanted to have another baby with Drew. So, I tried to seduce him.”

“Seduce?” Scotty asked.

“What method of _seduction_ did you opt for?”

Kim stammered, while Martin Gray objected to the relevance. He was overruled.

“Dr. Nero, please answer Mr. Baldwin’s question,” the judge ordered. “I drugged him. I drugged Drew and planned to have sex with him to get pregnant. Julian found us and nothing actually happened.”

“Nothing actually happened, you say. You drugged a man, stripped him naked, and came very close to forcing a sex act. That’s nothing? Is it nothing that you played on the false memories in Franco Baldwin’s mind and had sex with him when he had just suffered a major brain injury?”

“What we did was consensual.”

“For whom?”

“Drew and me.”

Scotty pointed at Franco. “That is not Drew Cain’s body. Franco Baldwin did not consent to a relationship with you. Do you have any reason to believe that your friendly acquaintance, the husband of your friend Elizabeth, would have had sex with you _if he were in his right mind_?” Scotty punctuated each of his last words for marked effect.

“No, Franco would never have cheated on Elizabeth.” Kim answered, flustered. She looked to Martin Gray who shook his head. “But he’s not Franco anymore.”

“What about Cameron?” Scotty asked.

“I don’t know what you mean.” Kim replied, trying to hold herself together.

“If Franco had not taken Cameron’s place and he believed he was Drew Cain and in love with you, would have had sex with a sixteen-year-old boy?”

“No!” Kim exclaimed. “Of course not!”

“Why not?” Scotty pursued his line of questioning.

“Because he’s a child.”

“But you said that Franco is now Drew Cain, so if the procedure had been done to Cameron, by your logic, he would be Drew Cain.”

“Well, he’s not.” Kim replied, angry at the implication that she would have sex with a minor.

“But Franco is?”

“Franco is Drew,” Kim answered, not realizing how bizarre her statement really was.

“His DNA says otherwise.” Scotty told her. “I have no more questions for this witness at this time.” Scotty’s tone was full of disgust.

Kim returned to her seat and reached for Franco’s hand as she walked by him, but he pulled away from her. Elizabeth watched the interchange. He was bothered that she had drugged Drew before having sex with him. Elizabeth couldn’t make eye contact with her husband, but his facial features were fixed in a way that she knew he was upset and trying to hide it. It had been a horrible thing to force to light in a courtroom, but Franco was worth fighting for and she would hold nothing back.

Martin Gray was clearly unhappy with the revelation that Kim had made. He called upon Andre Maddox and had Andre explain the origin of the memory mapping procedure, how it was designed to work, and how it had wound up affecting Jason Morgan, Drew Cain, and Franco Baldwin.

“So, you are saying there has been no attempt to restore memories thus far?

“Yes.”

“Why should this man volunteer for an experiment without any scientific backing?”

“To get his life back.” Andre answered. “I believe there’s a good chance he could do just that.”

“Easy for you to say… your brain isn’t in danger of being left in a vegetative state.” Martin argued. Scotty had no further questions for Andre. He may have been called by Martin Gray, but Dr. Maddox had done his best to sell the notion that the procedure could be successfully reversed.

Scotty called Kevin Collins to the stand. Kevin had not shared with either side what his determination about mental competence was. Despite his disdain for Kevin, Scotty believed he did have Franco’s best interests in mind.

“Dr. Collins, how familiar would you say you are with the mind of Franco Baldwin?”

“As his long-time therapist, I believe I know him better than anyone else in this room with the exception of his wife.”

“So, why did my son come to you for therapy in the first place. Please explain his medical and psychiatric history. In detail.”

Kevin took a breath before answering. “I am in an ethical predicament with your request. I have permission from the man who claims that he is Drew Cain to share my findings with the court. You are asking me to share privileged information about the man who is Franco Baldwin. I don’t have Franco Baldwin’s permission to discuss his psychiatric history.”

“Please refer to Exhibits 1A and 1B.” He gave Kevin two legal documents to review. “As you can see, Elizabeth Baldwin was granted medical power of attorney over her husband. Having his medical power of attorney, Elizabeth Baldwin has given you permission to discuss her husband’s psychiatric history because it is in the best interest of the entity of _Franco Baldwin_ for his psychiatric history to be recognized for the factors that matter in this identity crisis involving Drew Cain’s memories.”

Kevin reviewed the papers. He looked to Elizabeth and to Franco. “Franco Baldwin was illegally adopted by a woman named Betsy Frank. When he was a child, his given name was Robert, or Bobby.”

“Bobby Frank?” Franco spoke up. “Wait… what?”

Kevin looked to Franco. “Your body belongs to the person who Drew Cain or Andy knew as his twin brother.”

Franco shook his head. Martin Gray leaned over and whispered to him. “It’s irrelevant. You’re Drew Cain.” Franco listened to the lawyer and said nothing further at that time.

“Bobby and Andy were very close, as twins usually are. They were best friends. Their mother, Betsy Frank began seeing a serial pedophile named Jim Harvey.”

There were some gasps in the courtroom from people who did not know the truth about Jim Harvey. Franco looked up. “That’s not true. He never did anything like that to me.”

“Jim Harvey never molested Andrew because Bobby protected Andrew the best way that he could for a three to four-year-old child.”

Franco shook his head. “You’re lying. Uncle Jim loved Bobby. He loved him most of all.”

Kevin looked right at Franco. “No. He didn’t. He sexually abused Bobby. He brought toys as gifts for Bobby and Andy was jealous. Bobby understood that the toys were connected to the abuse. Jim Harvey convinced Bobby that he deserved what was being done to him and that if he told anyone that his mother and his brother would hate him. He threatened to hurt Betsy and Andy. Bobby was very young, but very bright. He sometimes locked Andy in a toy chest so that Jim couldn’t find him. One day Jim brought Andy a baseball mitt and Bobby panicked because he knew Jim would hurt Andy the way he was hurting him. He tried to get Andy to go to the basement to hide. He couldn’t explain why, and he couldn’t go with Andy. Andy didn’t want to by himself. Bobby wanted so badly for Andy to hide, that he pushed Andy down the stairs. Jim convinced Betsy that Bobby was a danger to Andy. He convinced Bobby that he was born evil. Betsy left Andrew at a foundling home and that’s why Andrew grew up without a family. And it is why Bobby grew up in a chaotic, unhealthy environment.”

A terrible pain shot through Franco’s brain. He grabbed both sides of his head and said, “No,” repeatedly as he shook his head. His brain hurt, literally hurt. How could he be both Bobby and Andy? Why didn’t anyone tell him Franco was Bobby? How was it true that Bobby had been trying to protect him from being molested and he never knew it? “No. No. No,” he said over and over.

Martin tried to calm his client down and touched his shoulder. “Get away from me!” Franco yelled at him. He got on the floor, trying to hide from the eyes that were all staring at him. He got under the table where he and the lawyer had been sitting. “This isn’t real. This isn’t real. None of this is real.”

“Your Honor?” Scotty got the judge’s attention.

“We will take a twenty-minute recess and at that time determine if this hearing should proceed further today.”

Elizabeth, Kevin, Scotty, and Kim all tried to get to Franco to calm him down. Scotty was the first to realize crowding his son was not going to help him. He tried to pull Kim away from him. In his mind, she was no better than Jim Harvey.

Kim insisted on being close to Franco. “It’s okay. I’m here,” she said, pushing Elizabeth aside. “Get away from me!” Franco yelled at her. “You’re just like him. You’re just like Uncle Jim.”

Stunned, Kim found herself being pulled away from Franco by Jason Morgan who told her to go sit down and be quiet. “Elizabeth, can I help?” he asked.

“Just back off. Everyone needs to back off,” she told them. “Please, everyone needs to leave but Scotty, Kevin, and Cameron.”

“You heard Elizabeth,” Jason announced to the people in the courtroom. “Everyone get out, now.”

When their marching orders came from Jason, the spectators knew they would be foolish to not obey them. He made sure only Elizabeth, Cameron, Scotty, and Kevin were in the courtroom and guarded the door from the outside to keep anyone else from going inside.

“Franco,” Elizabeth called to him, squeezing herself under the desk with her husband. He whined, shutting his eyes. “None of this is real,” he repeated.

“You’re real.” She told him as she took his hand. “I’m real. Our love is real.”

He shook his head. “No. No. No one will ever love me.”

“You’re wrong. _I love you_.” Elizabeth told him. “Please, Franco, look at me. Pay attention to me. You’ve been through hell to get to where you are, but you have to come back to me and to our family. We need you. We love you.”

Cameron approached them but wasn’t sure what to do. “We do need you,” he said, looking under the table. “And we do love you.”

Franco was quite a sight—a crumpled man in a crumpled formal Navy uniform. He looked like a child playing dress up.

“Franco, come out and talk to me. I can help you,” Kevin urged.

“I don’t understand this,” Franco told Kevin. He followed Elizabeth as she crawled into the open space. He sat against the wall with his legs pulled up to his chest. “How can I be Bobby? Bobby doesn’t exist anymore. He hasn’t existed for a long time. Even Franco didn’t want Bobby to exist.”

“That’s right,” Kevin said. “Franco didn’t want to remember himself as Bobby. That’s why he changed his name when he became an artist. How do you know that?”

Franco was speechless. “I… I don’t know how I know that. I’m Drew Ca—right? I’m not Drew?” It was as if this was the first time since the memory transfer that he truly considered that he might be more than Drew Cain’s memories. “I’m… who am I?”

“You’re my dad,” Cameron told him, sitting down next to him. “You saved my life. You’re the only dad I’ve ever had that really loved me and Jake and Aiden more than he loved himself. That’s why you have to come back.”

“I don’t remember,” he told them.

“But you _can _remember,” Elizabeth said.

“I think recognizing that you’re Bobby is a good first step,” Kevin told him. “I’ve helped you recover memories through hypnosis before. If you will just consent to that, we can try to find your true identity without any drastic experimental procedures.”

Franco covered his face with his hands, looking downward. “It hurts,” he said.

“What hurts?” Elizabeth asked. “My head hurts. Being Bobby hurts.” 

“I know it does,” she rubbed his arm. “You’ve gotten through it before. And you have such a strong support system now. It was just you and Kevin before. Now I can help. Your dad can help. Cameron can help.”

“No,” he said, drawing out the word. “Cameron is too young. He shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t know anything about Bobby.”

Cameron was hesitant, but he reached out to Franco. “I’m glad I know about Bobby. I’m glad I know about Andy.”

“Why?” Franco asked. “Why would anyone be glad to know about that?”

“Because,” Cameron answered. “Because it tells me that the guy who put himself in my place to keep some psycho from hurting me is the real Franco Baldwin, Bobby Frank, whoever it is that you are. Because Bobby did the same thing for Andy. That’s who you are. You’re _all in_.”

“Your love is self-sacrificial,” Elizabeth told him. “You would go to any lengths to protect your brother and you protected Cameron without regard to the cost to you. That’s the core of who you are. That’s why we need you to come back.”

“I think I’m having these flashes of Bobby’s life, but I still have all this Drew-ness in my head.” He winced, putting his hand to his forehead. “I’m confused.”

Twenty minutes had passed. The judge and guard entered the courtroom without any announcement. The judge approached Scotty, Kevin, Elizabeth, Cameron, and the man whose competence was in question. “Do we need to continue with this hearing?” she asked.

Everyone looked to Franco for the answer. “I’m confused,” he told her.

“Yes, I thought you might be.”

“I think I need to…” he paused. “I think I need to go to the hospital. Or home. _Do I have a home?_” he asked, looking to Elizabeth for an answer.

“You certainly have a home and we’ve been waiting months for you to come back.” Her eyes filled with tears.

He kept one hand to his face as if he were fighting the worst headache he had ever had. “I think I should do that. I think I should go home.”

“Finally. You’re saying something that makes sense!” Scotty announced. “Take him and run,” he told Elizabeth and Cameron. “Take that bozo with you too,” he referred to Kevin. The judge and I will tie up all the loose ends here.”

The judge nodded. “That is sound advice in my opinion.”

Elizabeth and Cameron helped Franco get to his feet. “There’s a way to exit without going into the hallway and being seen,” she told them.

“We would really appreciate that,” Elizabeth thanked her.

At the judge’s direction, the guard led them out of the courthouse through the judge’s chambers.

“I’ll drive,” Kevin volunteered, wanting to allow Elizabeth to fully focus on her husband. “Cam, you can ride up front with me.”

Cam nodded. He turned to Franco. “I know you’re confused right now, but the only thing you need to remember for certain is you are part of our family and we love you and we’re going to fight as hard for you as you did for me. Do you understand that?”

“Not really,” Franco answered. He could hardly process why anyone would want to fight for him.

“You’ll understand soon enough,” Elizabeth assured him. Her husband might still be confused and battling the two identities in his mind, but at least he was willing to try to come back to her now. And where Franco was concerned, she knew when he was _willing _to try, he was _going_ to succeed.

\--END

**Author's Note:**

> Confession: I wrote two paragraphs last night and the rest after work today. I didn't want to be influenced by the actual trial on the show.


End file.
